We, the Vehicles

Flameshovel; 2006

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Maritime's Glass Floor was nothing to write home about, and didn't hold out any hope for great things to come either. The prospect of a band comprised of two ex-Promise Ringers (Davey von Bohlen, Dan Didier) and Dismemberment Plan's virtuosic bassist, Eric Axelson, was at least one-third exciting. But not only did Glass Floor fail to capture any of the Plan's rumbling energy, it wasn't even as good as the Promise Ring, misplacing that band's occasional moments of fizzy pop glory in a morass of murky songwriting. Davey's precious lisp was even more pronounced against the drab musical backdrop; the melodies meandered; Axelson puttered away on inconsequential basslines (which was kind of like using a Stradivarius as a doorstop).

What a terrific surprise, then, that We, the Vehicles not only exceeds its predecessor, but serves as a corrective to every one of its deficiencies. This is still post-emo indie-pop, and some listeners have no patience with the genre no matter how well-turned. But for what it's worth, We, the Vehicles is post-emo indie-pop at its finest. Davey von Bohlen, no longer lisping and puling, has developed a confident, nuanced and-- gosh, almost adult?-- singing style that makes you want to drop the diminutive and start calling him "Dave." Instead of the rickety, blasé acoustic whatever that often masquerades as emotional authenticity in post-emo songwriter stuff (Glass Floor included), we get sharp, spacious guitar melodies with an actual bite. And apparently someone gave Axelson the go-ahead to just get nuts on the bass-- the mechanically precise, aerodynamic lines that helped create Dismemberment Plan's sense of off-kilter glide provide a foundation of seething energy for We, the Vehicles, bending it away from the watery slackerisms of its predecessor and into more fertile D Plan/Death Cab territory.

While the album is consistently strong, the first three direly infectious songs are pitch-perfect expressions of the form. "Calm" has a sort of Springsteenian faded glamour, with its down-but-not-out lyrics; the starry whorls of guitar and von Bohlen's confident vocals lofting triumphantly on sudden updrafts. The propulsive yet temperate verses of "Tearing Up the Oxygen" are book ended by choruses filled with breathy, harmonized "ahs" and a simple, ideally placed keyboard blips, an economy of sound producing a rich aural field. And "People, the Vehicles" is a dead-ringer for late D Plan, with its fluid bass and prickly/coasting guitars, and includes some of von Bohlen's most striking imagery to date: His "boys with directionless hair" and "languorous girls in undertaker make-up." That it also includes some dross about "our painted bodies in the secret morning" is something I'm glossing over-- the song is so engaging that I'm unwilling to shrug it off so easily. We forgave Interpol for their clunkier efforts, and I'm not going to penalize Maritime just for having cheaper haircuts.